Sony: Perfect Accuracy Can Make Motion Games ‘Unplayable’

Sony game chief Shuhei Yoshida says titles developed for the Move motion controller have a better shot at worldwide success, because they are based on gameplay rather than story.Photo: Robert Gilhooly/Wired.com

TOKYO — The best PlayStation Move videogames will know how to fake players out, says Sony’s top game man.

The firm’s new Move motion controller pairs a handheld wand with a camera for unparalleled accuracy, but a hyperaccurate game isn’t really what players want, says Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios.

“You have to be very good at pingpong in real life if we make a simulator,” said Yoshida, who oversees all game development that happens under Sony’s wide umbrella. “Our teams have devised a way to make you feel that everything you do is accurately tracked. However, the game does a lot of assisting so that you won’t miserably fail.”

During the Tokyo Game Show last week, Yoshida answered questions about creating games for PlayStation Move. Another notion Yoshida floated: Because Move games can be built purely around unique 3-D gameplay experiences instead of characters and storylines, they might more easily overcome the cultural barriers that have long existed between Japan’s game industry and the West.

Yoshida spoke with Wired.com about Move’s capabilities, its skimpy resource requirements and the various ways the new motion controller might shake up the videogame industry.

Wired.com: Move is much more accurate than the Wii remote, so it can be used to create much more complex games. But will those be attractive to a general audience?

Shuhei Yoshida: We never intended to use the accuracy as-is, because that makes games totally unplayable…. But people love one-to-one, they really enjoy seeing on the screen what you are doing, actually tracked. Our teams have devised a way to make you feel that everything you do is accurately tracked….

It’s taking the intent of the player by looking exactly at what he or she is doing, but assisting, filtering it a little bit, and still giving a little bit of what he or she has done. You feel like, “This is what I intended.” It makes you feel like a good player, but still allows people to progress from entry level to advanced.

You remove the assistance bit by bit. Games become more challenging, but at the same time you understand completely that if you fail it’s your fault, and if you succeed it’s your achievement.

I think that’s a new requirement for designing games using accurate motion tracking. But unless you have accurate motion tracking, you cannot create that depth of gameplay.

PlayStation Move's handheld controllers work with cameras to provide hyperaccurate response.Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comWired.com: Besides creating original games for Move, you’re also adding optional support into various hard-core game projects like SOCOM.

Yoshida: When we were developing Move, we really wanted it to be the second standard controller for PlayStation 3. One requirement we had for ourselves and the hardware guys was that Move shouldn’t take many resources from the hardware — CPU or memory usage.

The Move team asked our studio members how much memory and CPU we were willing to give them, and the team said, zero memory and zero CPU. You might know that Move uses a fraction of one SPU out of the six SPUs (on the Cell processor) that games can use. Even with four Move controllers at the same time, the use will never exceed one SPU. Most games on the PlayStation 3 have never used all the SPUs.

The requirement is that the resources taken by the hardware shouldn’t be so large that developers feel that by adapting to Move they have to compromise the main game.

SOCOM 4 was technically almost finished, engine-wise, when they received the Move dev kit. Same with Killzone 3. They were able to put Move support in pretty quickly. I was happy to see comments from the developer of Ruse, a strategy game [from Ubisoft]. When they showed the game at Gamescom and the developers were asked in an interview when they started integration, they said three weeks ago. The result is beautiful.

He went on to say that comparing the different versions of Ruse on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the PC is the best user interface with the mouse and the keyboard, which is the way that real-time strategy games are usually played. But the PlayStation 3 is the most fun.

Our studios are not making any such kind of game. But those hard-core games not necessarily started or designed for Move will find a great use of it.

Wired.com: Move is coming in late in the PlayStation 3’s lifecycle. Can you make games that only support Move when the install base is such a small fraction of total PS3s?

‘This is a completely new input mechanism for games, so we are experimenting a lot.’

Yoshida: I don’t think we are late, because we couldn’t have made Move when we launched PS3. We needed the time to be able to create the performance of Move with the target price that we started out with. A 2010 system is what we are launching in 2010. In that sense, I don’t think we are late at all.

Because we are starting from scratch in terms of installed base, we completely understand it’s our job as a first party to make games exclusive to Move and show examples of things that the system allows you to do. This is a completely new input mechanism for games, so we are experimenting a lot.

Wired.com: Do you want to get Move support into as many games as possible?

Yoshida: The answer is yes, but the Move support has to be good. We don’t want people to be disappointed. As I said, it doesn’t take too much memory or CPU. Just adapting Move for something is not difficult at all.

Some genres, like shooters, are straightforward: You just point and shoot. With other genres — action-adventure, driving games — it’s not as clear.

It will take some time and experiments to see how Move could be utilized well in those genres. I don’t expect all of our titles to support Move.

Wired.com: Are you reaching out to more developers that you haven’t worked with in the past to create these Move games?

Yoshida: Most of our launch titles are done by new developers that we are working with. The initial focus for the first two or three years on PS3 was our core audience. We are trying to reach a broader audience with Move titles, especially with dedicated titles, so we reached out to developers who have that kind of thinking. We are going to make dedicated games for more traditional gamers, as well.

Echochrome II is a pretty unique title. When the team presented the concept in a regular marketing meeting, the marketing guys said, “Well, why don’t you make it compatible with the DualShock 3?”

The developers had a clear idea of what they wanted to do with Move, but on paper it’s really hard to communicate. But once the team did the implementation and people tried it, nobody wanted DualShock anymore.

When we started the project, what we wanted to achieve was to totally manipulate the 3-D space in front of you. So we seriously considered making two Moves as the standard configuration. Reaching into 2-D space with both of your hands is the most powerful experience but we realized many games don’t need two.

Wired.com: At Tokyo Game Show, many of the games on the floor are Western-made, even though players don’t seem to want to try them. Do you think that will change?

Yoshida: I would like to see a change happen. I seriously hope that will happen. But I was the head of Worldwide Studios America from 2000 to 2008. And we’ve seen many games that sold millions of units outside Japan do, like, 100,000 units in Japan.

I felt like I was those international developers, trying to get into the Japanese market time and time again, disappointed with the numbers. There are clearly different sensibilities. Subtle things, how characters behave, what feels right or wrong.

Because the games are getting more and more realistic and games are able to depict real human emotions and actions, it could be the case that the challenge is becoming even bigger because in the old days characters were very simplified. People used their imaginations about how Mario might look like in real life. It was easier in those years to cross the cultural difference.

I’ve been saying to Japanese developers that Move games are based on experience, not based on graphics or characters. They have a better chance of getting games from Japanese developers to do well outside Japan. Same thing for the games made by U.S. and European developers: I think there is a better chance of Move games doing well in Japan.

Eighty percent of development by Sony Worldwide Studios is done outside Japan. But the revenue coming from those titles in Japan is very, very small. From a financial standpoint, I think we have many great games, and because I lived in the U.S. for so long I no longer have the same sensibility as regular Japanese consumers.

So I don’t understand why they don’t embrace these titles. It’s a mystery to many people outside Japan as to why they don’t appreciate these games.